Downing Street Says » Repossessions

» Thursday, January 22, 2009

Repossessions

Asked whether the Prime Minister was concerned with the level of repossessions, the PMS said that of course the Prime Minister was concerned with the level of repossessions and that was why we were taking significant action in order to help people who, as a result of the downturn in the economy, lost their jobs or found their household income falling significantly and faced difficulty meeting their mortgage payments.

We had taken action to help those people who were made unemployed with an enhancement of the mortgage support for interest payments scheme and as people knew, we were in discussions with the banks about introducing measures to allow for a moratorium on payments for households that suffered a significant fall in their household income. Put that the banks did not seem to be paying much attention, the PMS repeated that we were in discussion with the banks about this and we would be in a position shortly to be able to announce further details of the measure that the Prime Minister announced in the Queen’s Speech.

Asked what that measure was, the PMS said that it was to enable people who suffered a significant reduction in their household income, for example if you had two people working in a household and one lost their job, to be able to defer all or some of their mortgage interest payments for a period of up to two years.

In terms of the other measures, there was a new Mortgage Pre-Action Protocol, which was introduced by the Civil Justice Council at the end of last year, which made clear that magistrates should consider repossessions as a last resort. We had also introduced a 200million mortgage rescue scheme to help the most vulnerable families such as people who had been made unemployed.

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